Since 2005 the GameDays take place in Darmstadt as Science meets Business event in the field of Serious Games. The permanent host of GameDays is the Serious Games group at the Technical University of Darmstadt. Several cooperation partners support the event. The Science meets Business program includes talks and demos presented by academia and industry.
Interested students and pupils can join the program and to contact with experts in the Serious Games community. Additionally, game developer courses are provided, not only for young people.
In the public part of the GameDays, politicians, families, kids, etc. are invited to join a Serious Games Rallye with numerous exhibitions. Hereby the public audience gets a clue about Serious Games and its potential for societal relevant areas such as education, health, mobility, environment, planning, tourism, and cultural heritage or security and energy.
In 2010 the GameDays was enhanced by an academic part resulting in the GameDays Int'l Conference on Serious Games. The Serious Games group has hosted this conference at the Technical University of Darmstadt in 2010, 2011, 2012 in cooperation with the EDUTAINMENT 2012 and 2014.
2015 the GameDays Int'l Conference on Serious Games has been merged with the Int'l Conference on Serious Games, Development and Applications, resulting in the Joint Conference on Serious Games (JCSG).
The JCSG conference is the only international conference that is fully dedicated to the multifaceted characteristics of Serious Games.
Since 2013 the Serious Games group has regularly participated in game james, namely the Global Game Jam and Ludum Dare. Group members organize the game jams on-site and invite interested colleagues, students, and other entrepreneurs aside from the academic community.
During the game jams, teams are built, who tackle the provided topic of the game jams and start to design their own games in a short time, e.g., 72 hours.
The elaborated games are presented among the participating groups at the end of the game jams. The groups provide valuable feedback to each other – without scores, prices, leaderboards, or credit points, but just for fun.